Popular entries

Recent entries

Ye Merry Medieval Update

№154

7 Sept. 2013, ~5 minutes

InLife

In which the Erikssons visit Rochester Castle and its medieval re-enactment.

Hear ye, hear ye! By decree of his royal majesty king Carlos, son of Erik, all ye who hath cast thy putrid gaze upon these words of holy proclamation shall gaze no more lest they be forever thrown into the pits of hell, where they shall burn in fire and brimstone. All ye hath been warned and so forth and such, mumble mumble…

You still didn’t heed my warning? Wow, even though I went all Old English — sort of — on your asses and still you wouldn’t budge. You’re braver — or dumber — than I thought.

Sometimes one makes great plans that gang aft agley — that go to shit — and other times one’s wife tells you about a plan she has made and you don’t really get to have much say in the matter. As you might suspect, this weekend was more of the latter and well… that’s a good thing.

In the name of my forefathers I have come to take this castle!

Her plan was deliciously simple.

Step back in time at Rochester Castle with a weekend of medieval merriment, including; a Medieval fashion show, re-enactors, cooking displays, have-a-go archery, period stalls and traders, living history.

So two train rides and short walk later we arrived at the castle and having managed to pick up my second cup of coffee I was feeling quite excited at this point. Okay, to be honest I had been pretty excited to begin with, the thought of seeing knights in armour with swords and all. I mean, come on, what’s not to like?

This little piggy went into my mouth.

We walked around, looked at things, talked to people, ate wood roasted hog and tried on large metal helmets that made me feel like if I ever suddenly found myself in medieval times I would die a pretty fast and gruesome death because those helmets… are really fucking heavy. And my pathetic 21st century body probably couldn’t handle it.

One of the rules of chivalry included; Never aim for the eyes.

Then again, I probably couldn’t handle the plague either, so I’m pretty dead whichever way we look at it. Sadly, I didn’t get the opportunity to try on complete set of chainmail armour, which means I’m so putting that on my bucket list.

I would have also wanted to try my hand at archery but decided against it after consulting with my wife, whose only comment was “but you can’t even kill anyone with those lame arrows”. In other words, we would wait until we found an archery range where the arrows we shoot are actually highly lethal because otherwise there’s no point.

They also had a falconry display which was really cool but unfortunately I don’t have any decent pictures from that because… well… you try to take a picture — with my HTC One S — of a Peregrine Falcon diving to attack. So instead I’m giving you this; A woman sitting and making food.

Cometh Dine With Me.

And that concludes the medieval portion of our program.

I’ve also been playing Tomb Raider a lot this week. Obviously not enough to get through the game yet but I’m sure I will soon. At least I think so. It’s honestly a bit difficult to know because the game keeps throwing curveballs at me all the time, taunting me;

“Yeah, I promise. This is totally the last cutscene. See, there’s that rescue plane now—

Storm clouds suddenly appear and lightning strikes the plane instantly, flames erupting around it as it’s quite obviously now heading straight towards me. As a fiery inferno of death.

And it keeps doing this, over and over. And I keep falling for it, every time. But don’t think of this a complaint. Tomb Raider has magnificent pacing and is easily one of the most intense games I’ve played in quite a while. But like in a good and memorable way.